


☆ [Mark As Favorite]

by punkascas (earlwyn)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drug Use, Fluff, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sick Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlwyn/pseuds/punkascas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A newly-human Castiel requires an emergency visit to the hospital. Set in some nebulous time post-S8.</p>
            </blockquote>





	☆ [Mark As Favorite]

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: caring for each other while ill. Beta graciously provided by [t-eyla](http://t-eyla.tumblr.com/).

"I'm going to give you Dilaudid," the doctor said between setting down two hypodermic needles onto the tray and fishing out an alcohol swab.

The room had come equipped with three wooden folding chairs, two against the wall near the door and one next to the bed where Castiel's clothes sat folded in strenuous, military neatness. Dean clenched his fingers around the edges of his seat and wished Cas still did that awful suit and trench look so there'd been more clothes to fold. He needed something to do with his hands.

"Hold up. You're going to give him what?"

"Dilaudid. Brand name for hydromorphone," Castiel supplied, thumbs punching a Google search into Dean's phone as if he wasn't the one currently corkscrewed on his side in the hospital bed and ass-revealing hospital gown. "It has a high risk for addiction and dependence, and can cause respiratory distress and death when taken in high doses or when combined with other substances, especially alcohol."

"Thanks," Dean gritted out, while the doctor appeared to be entertained.

"Hey, that's right. I'm going to need you to sit up for me, all right, dude, so I can give you the shot. We're going to do one now and then see how you react before we give you the second."

Like he wasn't tracking that shots involve needles and someone stabbing said needles into him, Cas started the slow ordeal of uncurling. He didn't make any sound or anything, but the bicep muscles under the sleeve of his gown kept jumping in time with his breathing, each of his exhales coming out tight and short. Dean found the bed rail pressing against his thighs in two seconds flat, fingers already pushing back the sweat-damp hair on Cas's forehead as Cas struggled into a seated position. He had his fist dug into his right side above his hip, breathing hard with the pain. No way in hell a needle to the ass or the stomach was going to help with that.

"And just where the fuck do you think you're sticking him with that?" Dean asked, rubbing circles between Cas's shoulder blades, pressing his body into Cas's shoulder to give Cas something to lean against.

The doctor gave him a look, one blonde eyebrow raised. "In the shoulder, smart ass." She smiled as she caught Cas's eye. "Your choice which one. Any preference?"

Dean was on Cas's left so Cas opted for his right arm, pushing up his sleeve. He smiled back at the doctor, one of those small ones that revealed his top teeth and made two little slants appear on the inner edge of his eyebrows. She could be considered pretty, maybe—40s-ish, dyed blonde hair pulled back in a no-nonsense ponytail, and casually, confidently personable. That'd probably be a real good fit for Cas, if he was looking for something, someone relaxed and funny who could balance out all ways Cas was still new to humanity, all his awkward edges and angles. Right age range, too. 

Dean didn't know if Cas _was_ looking or if he was even thinking about those kinds of things at all yet. Even so, his hand still found its way to the back of Cas's neck, proprietary, squeezing and massaging the tense muscles there while Dr. Adina swiped the alcohol pad over Cas's skin and then pulled the cap off the needle.

"Okay. Shake this hand for me. More. Harder. No, _really_ shake it. Keep shaking it until I'm done."

All wide, trusting eyes looking up at her, Cas asked, "Is this necessary?"

Except, yeah, it was, and Dean knew why. Moving around place to place meant Dad wasn't great at keeping them up to date on all their vaccines as kids. But hunting life comes with too few foreseeable risks to ignore preventable ones when you can. Making sure they got all their tetanus shots had been a no-brainer.

"It helps with the sting," Dean said, surprising even himself with the sudden memory. "She's going give you the shot in your muscle and that burns. Moving around keeps it from aching as bad."

Now Cas was staring up at him, and he kept staring through the entire procedure. Never since Cas walked himself into his life in that barn six years ago had Dean been able to resist meeting those eyes. He rubbed his thumb in sympathy behind Cas's ear when Cas gave a little wince-hiss, solution sinking into the muscle tissue.

"Sore?" Dean asked, quiet like it was somehow private. Cas nodded.

Ripping off her gloves, Dr. Adina chucked the used needle into the bin on her way out of the room. "Give it about twenty to kick in. I'll come back to check on you in a while and see how you're feeling," she said, and closed the door behind her.

They were a long goddamn twenty minutes.

Eventually, slowly, Cas's body uncoiled. His forehead smoothed out and his mouth lost its pain lines. Body heavy, more and more of its weight slumped against Dean's stomach as Cas relaxed into him. The drugs were doing their job. Fist finally dropping away from his side, Cas's head lolled back on a limp neck. The grin he bestowed on Dean was wide and stoned and made his nose crinkle up at the bridge.

Dean chuckled. Unable to help it, he brushed his fingers over Cas's hair, mussing it up further. "Bet you're feeling pretty good now, hey, buddy?"

"I like drugs. Drugs are great." A slight slur modified the words. Yet it was the same intense precision Cas always managed. "I don't understand why human society has prohibited drug use as a moral condition. Suffering does not make you righteous. Suffering is—is _stupid_." A line of pure derision bisected Cas's brows. "Now that I'm human, I think I would like to be on drugs all the time, Dean. Dean. _All the time_ , Dean."

A memory niggled and pinched in the back of his mind. Once upon a time there was a Castiel who looked a lot like this. Hair a little too long and eyes a little too wide, gleefully delighted by his own hedonism. But that Cas was broken, cracked in places so deep that Dean had no hope of ever healing him. That Cas was human too, or something close to it. Just like this Cas. 

The past few months with Cas, the late nights shared in Cas's room in the bunker, had given Dean a glimpse of how deep the loss of his grace—Heaven, home, family, everything he's ever known—ran for Cas. Somehow Dean used to believe that Cas's thing about Heaven was a question of loyalty, of who Cas cared about more: Heaven or humanity, angels or Dean. Stupid. He had been stupid. It was so obvious now that it was more a question of known and unknown, of belonging or alienation. There's so little Cas knew first-hand about being human, about being sick or in pain. Everything for him these last few months had been a sharp shock to his system, disorienting and exhausting. He didn't want this reprieve on opiates to become Cas's only form of reprieve. He didn't want the fissures of transition Cas was currently suffering to widen into permanent cracks, to break Cas into the person he met in Zachariah's world.

He pushed the hair back from Cas's face again. "Yeah. Not all the time, buddy. That's not good for you. It's just to help out for the meantime 'cause your stomach hurts. But if it keeps hurting, they're going to take your appendix out so you don't have to keep getting shots like this."

Cas nodded, then tilted his head to follow Dean's hand, chasing the touch. "I'll need surgery." Eyes slipping shut, he grunted in satisfaction when Dean's hand returned to his head. "Yes. Keep doing that. That feels good. Keep doing it. I like it when you touch my hair."

To be honest, Dean couldn't remember the last time he had done this with anyone, if he ever had before. But it felt good, and if Cas liked it, there was no reason to not keep going.

"Hairs. Hair. Is hair plural? Why is one hair—one hair, Dean? And two hairs—are two hairs? But multiple strands of hair is just hair? Dean? Doesn't that seem odd to you? Doesn't the English language seem—needlessly ridiculous?"

"Boy, you really are baked, aren't you?" Dean said instead of trying to respond the question. It wasn't like Cas really expected an answer, right?

"But it is ridiculous, Dean," Cas insisted, interrupting himself by making a quiet, staccato hum deep in his throat when Dean's nails caught on a tangle by accident. Cas leaned his skull hard into his fingertips, butting into the sensation like a cat. "More. That. More of that."

Instead of petting, Dean began to scratch softly against Cas's scalp, offering what was amounting to an impromptu scalp massage to his male, non-human, sort-of-brother. He should probably mind, and if Sam were here, he'd act like he did. But he didn't, not really. He added in the other hand because in truth, he kind of liked it. It distracted Cas from the inflammation in his appendix, and it felt good to see Cas enjoy something for once. It felt productive. It felt like something Dean never risked identifying too closely, just in case it violated that male, non-human, sort-of-brother label. The something had been there for a long time, and they didn't talk about it, and it didn't need to be acknowledged. But it felt nice to get to act on it for a moment. A relief. His own personal display of hedonism. Not like Cas was going to remember this in twelve hours, when it wasn't two in the morning and they weren't in a hospital room. Not like anyone but him was going to know.

"You're also ridiculous," Cas said after a minute. "Your name is ridiculous. Dean. That's my favorite word, Dean. Your name. Dean. In any language."

He wasn't sure what to do with that. That wasn't a normal thing people said with an in-built response. "Uh. Thanks?"

"You're my favorite person, too." And then Cas's eyes were open again, and locked on his, and Dean was trapped once more. "You're my favorite everything," Cas mumbled quietly. "Humans have favorites. You invented this concept of—favoriting things. Identifying what is a superior preference above all else. And you have lots of them. That you ask each other about in small talk. Favorite—color. Favorite movie. Favorite . . . tree?"

"I'm pretty sure no one has a favorite kind of tree," Dean tried, but his voice was weak, throat squeezed tight around the words.

Cas's expression twisted up in stubborn irritation. "People have favorite trees, Dean. _You_ are my favorite tree. You are my favorite—everything. Anything. You are my superior preference. Above all else. Always."

It was just so earnest, the way Cas talked. He had this remarkable ability to managed something no one else Dean had met ever could. Devotion. Pure and complete, body and soul. Like there was never a time in history when Cas didn't believe what he was saying, and there'd never be a time when he'd doubt it or take it back. And Dean couldn't say anything to it, couldn't breathe.

"Sometimes I think I might be one of your favorite things too," Cas continued, horrifying and unstoppable, "but you don't let yourself say it or think it or even always feel it. And then you act—cruel." Cas frowned. "And you say things you don't mean. And you try to make me feel bad or go away but really it's you trying to make yourself go away. To not feel it. Because you're afraid."

He couldn't. He couldn't, not with the way Cas was looking at him or the things Cas was saying. His lungs had seized, leaving him light-headed. But he had to, because there was no one else, nothing for distraction, and Cas just kept on _looking_ at him like that. 

Swallowing, he forced the words out with a dry mouth. "What am I afraid of?"

Cas tilted his head to one side, cupping his cheek on accident or on purpose into Dean's waiting palm. "Sometimes I think you're afraid it's not true. That I won't feel the same as you. That you've confused it for something else, because you've never felt it before, because you've only ever had Sam, and if you give it a name you will be misrepresenting yourself. But sometimes," Cas whispered, and his eyes seemed very large, "more often, I think you're afraid that it _is_ true. And what that would mean. And what that would mean—if you lost it."

Tears prickled his eyes, helpless. Cas was supposed to be the ones on opiates, prone to emotional exaggeration and random crying and shit. Not him. He was supposed to be the one helping things here, taking care of Cas and walking him through the scary new world of illness and emergency room visits.

Fingers tugged at his t-shirt. When he looked down, there was Cas's hand, pinching at the fabric, smoothing down his side in comfort under the cover of his flannel.

"Dean."

Cas called to him, so he had to. He had to look up and meet those eyes again, sad looking now, apologetic in the creases of the crow's feet. 

"Could you just say it once?" Cas pleaded, hand balling up a patch of his shirt. "For me. You could say it quietly and then I won't tell anyone. It would be our secret, just between us. I'd just like to hear it once. Just—one time. Please, Dean?"

The hospital at night was silent, parking lot empty and suburban when they got there. A lone security guard had greeted them when he'd helped Cas hobble through the sliding doors, and there'd been no wait as he'd answered the receptionist's questions about the reason for their visit. The nurse had called them back immediately to take Cas's vitals. Temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygen stats—all living proof that Cas was human now, the pain in his stomach proof that he was susceptible to human weakness. At the time, Dean had been grateful for the quick service. Get Cas in and out, that'd been the goal, a lifetime of meatball surgery no use for a sudden, inexplicable, debilitating stomach ache. Not this. This wasn't the plan.

"Please, Dean."

He couldn't move. There was nothing left but Cas's desperate expression and the sick pounding of his own heart, as if the entire complex, the entire town, was populated by only him and Cas. The rest of everything—reality, sense, a handful of hospital staff—they were all somewhere distant and far away.

Something clicked in his throat when he swallowed and it felt like his heart breaking. "What if I lose you?"

Hunting came with no guarantees other than death. Cas had already died too many times as an angel. What chance did he stand as a human? The acute appendicitis would be just the beginning. So many other things laid in wait for them, cancers, liver disease, suicide. Both he and Sam had been there a time or two, struggled against that urge to throw it all away. Cas would face it too, eventually. There was that Castiel in the other world, another life, broken and hysterical from it. He didn't want that. How much worse it would hurt to watch Cas shatter apart like that if he could feel it too, under his hands and against his skin, down in the center of his heart if he let Cas in. If he let it be true.

"What if I lose you too?" he asked again, words thick and sticky with the tears that wouldn't fall no matter how much he'd braced himself for them. He'd already lost Mom and Dad. He wasn't going to survive another.

An arm slid around the small of his back, Cas's fingers gentle, bunching up the fabric until they brushed warm skin. Calluses were already beginning to form on Cas's index and middle fingers from the use of living: guns, pencils, a new habit Cas picked up where he chewed the cuticle on his thumb when he was distracted and thinking. Dean had been next to him for each of those moments that hardened that skin. He didn't want to give that up. He knew those hands. They belonged with him, on his skin, held in his hands.

He had to close his eyes.

Cas said, "You won't. I promise, Dean. I promise. Like, a lot. A whole bunch, Dean. A lot a lot."

Traitorously, helplessly, he laughed. It came out wet on the end, stuffing up his nose, and making him sniffle. "A whole bunch, huh."

"I'm very high right now," Cas responded, impervious. "Your mockery doesn't interest me."

And that must have been the truth, because then Cas was pulling him closer with the arm around his back, or was pulling himself closer, and then Cas's feet were hanging off the edge of the bed and his thighs were on either side of his own and Cas's head was resting against his chest, and he was being hugged full-bodied by a very stoned ex-angel.

Because Cas had said before that he liked it, Dean stroked his hair back from his face and set his cheek against the top of Cas's head. Cas hummed in approval.

"If you know how I feel, why do I have to say it?"

"Because I'm asking you to and it is the right thing to do and you love to be self-righteous."

"Okay, first off? When you're trying to do, uh, love confessions or whatever, insulting the other person is not so much the point."

"It's not an insult; it's true. You are self-righteous and at times very arrogant, as well as very stubborn, and headstrong, and a poor strategist, and unrealistically determined. But that is why you are my favorite thing in all Creation," Cas said. "Because somehow, against all odds and rational belief and usually the desires of very powerful supernatural entities, you achieve whatever it is you're trying to do. You're amazing. You amaze me."

It was almost too much. He pressed a kiss to the top of Cas's head partially in gratitude and half in hope that it would make Cas shut up. "Uh. Same, you know. You too. Amaze me." For a second, he paused, gathering his courage, then said, "And I do. Feel it. I do."

Cas tipped his head back, chin digging into Dean's chest as he sought out his eyes. "I'm your favorite?"

"Well, there's Sam," he hedged.

"I don't mean in that way. I mean in the way—some humans marry each other."

" _Jesus_. Cas." He hadn't known Cas was looking or thinking about those kinds of things. And he thought if Cas _was_ , he'd be looking in the direction of people like that doctor who was here earlier. He didn't expect—didn't dare to hope—that Cas might be looking closer to home. That Cas would find what he was looking for so close to home. "I think we're going a little fast here."

"Six years is too fast?" Cas asked, eyebrows all bunched together in a pout.

It was cute, and it shouldn't be, and Dean had always wanted to kiss the hills that Cas's brow muscles raised above his nose. He probably could now. So he did. Cas's forehead was sweaty and tasted faintly of salt and that cleaning product smell that always invaded hospitals.

"No. I guess not," he breathed onto Cas's skin. "But for me, right now, it is. We got to do this—slow, okay? Take it slow. And do it sober. You might change your mind when you're not busy chasing the dragon."

"No," Cas murmured back, and when Dean looked, there was that smile again, the small one where he could just see Cas's teeth, the one that meant Cas was happy and pleased with himself and the world, and Dean never knew he could make Cas look like that either. "I won't change my mind. You're my favorite tree—for always, Dean."

Dean smiled his own version of that smile back. "Yeah. You're my favorite tree too, Cas."

**End.**


End file.
